U.S. Imposes Sanctions on 8 Iran Officers for Crackdown
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — Opening a new front in its pressure campaign against Tehran, the Obama administration on Wednesday set eight Iranian officers on a blacklist for their role inside bloody suppression of anti-government demonstrators right after the disputed Iranian election last year.
Under an executive order signed by President Obama, the Usa will freeze foreign assets and deny visas towards the eight officials, who consist of the commander of your Islamic Innovative Guard Corps along with the minister of welfare and social security.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who announced the sanctions with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, accused the men of ordering the arbitrary arrest, beating, torture, rape, blackmail, and killing of Iranian citizens from the violent crackdown soon after the June 2009 election.
“This is the initial time that the U.s.a. has imposed sanctions on Iran based on human rights abuses,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We would like to be in a position to let you know that it may be the last, but we fear not.”
The administration’s action comes inside wake of tougher United Nations and American sanctions imposed against Iran due to its nuclear system. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Geithner stated that those measures have been beginning to show final results: Iran has begun negotiating with the Usa and other main powers about returning on the table to discuss its nuclear ambitions.
Wednesday’s measures have been a lot more symbolic than substantive. Probably the most considerable figure around the list — Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the innovative guard corps — has already been set around the blacklist by the America due to his involvement within the nuclear system.
The sanctions reflect how far the Obama administration has come in its response to your upheaval in Iran. When angry crowds initial took to your streets of Tehran to protest the disputed elections in June 2009, Mr. Obama was reluctant to voice his concern, fearful that the Iranian regime would seize on his words to paint the opposition as tools of your United states of america.
Because the Iranian government’s brutal crackdown, and what Mrs. Clinton described as a mounting cycle of repression — the banning of political parties, the closing of newspapers, the jailing of human-rights activists — the America has been increasingly vocal about rights abuses. Now it has named the officials it believes are the chief culprits.
“We’ve constantly explained that we not just cared in regards to the nuclear program in Iran, we cared in regards to the people of Iran, and we cared about their conditions in their country,” Mrs. Clinton mentioned on Wednesday.